Under the influence

Ephesians 6:4 says, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Jordan says, “Notice that it’s possible to fail as a father by provoking your children to wrath. That’s something you have to be on guard against. But the positive is to ‘bring them up.’ Notice it didn’t say to ‘send them off to. ‘It didn’t say, ‘Send them over there and let momma teach them.’ It said bring them with you. You go there and take your kids with you because if you’ll go there, the likelihood is they’ll follow you there.

“You know what I’ve learned about being a dad. I learned from my dad that the longer he’s been with the Lord the more impact he has on me. That’s a strange thing. Have you experienced that? The older you get the more you remember what your dad said to you?

“He’d probably be happy that I finally listened to some of the things he said to me. Most of them I didn’t listen to very carefully necessarily while he was alive and I was living at home. My point is those things stick with you through life, for good or bad.

“Now, they’re not excuses. The bad aren’t excuses for you to do bad and the good’s not an excuse for you not to have to do good. They’re just there and the influences come along.

“Ephesians 5:33. You know, you read surveys about what do men need and what do men want. Can I tell you that a man’s first greatest need is not sex. That’s what all the psychologists say. You go in my office and get Chuck Colson’s book about marriage and the first thing he says is every man needs is sex. That isn’t what that verse says.

“When you try to live your life based upon what the world tells you need, you need to look behind what they’re telling you because somebody’s trying to sell you something. Have you caught on to that yet?

“You know why sex sells. I was watching the television the other day and it was just nakedness all over. Not just women but men and so forth. The reason that sells like that is in I Corinthians 11:3: ‘But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.’

“If the head of the woman is the man, when you’re out there selling the woman, who are you really glorifying? The man. There’s a self-centered, self-exalting issue in that. That’s why it’s used to sell because it’s designed to stroke the man’s ego and to suck the man in and to get the man’s pride going. There’s a psychology in that.”